JVA FAQs

The Judicatory Vitality Assessment is designed to help a judicatory’s leadership:

• Diagnose the judicatory’s vitality and sustainability.
• Identify the judicatory’s internal/organizational strengths and weaknesses.
• Identify the judicatory’s strengths and weaknesses in how it relates to its congregations..
• Develop and prioritize strategies to address the above.

• Vitality: Is the judicatory thriving, surviving, or declining?
• Sustainability: Does the judicatory have the people, financial, and contextual resources necessary to survive and thrive?

The JVA measures how effectively a judicatory is carrying out 16 vital areas of judicatory functioning:

1. Vision, Mission, & Discernment
2. Congregational Engagement & Empowerment
3. Context Awareness & Inclusion
4. Change Readiness
5. Dealing with Differences/Conflict
6. Spiritual Life & Worship
7. Formation, Education, & Training
8. Outreach to Congregations
9. Leadership & Organization
10. Stewardship
11. Collaborative Ministry
12. Assessment & Evaluation
13. Infrastructure
14. Judicatory–Congregation Trust
15. Providing for Leadership Growth
16. Ministry Development & Redevelopment

The JVA measures several aspects of judicatory functioning that indicative of whether the judicatory has sufficient internal resources to survive, thrive, and carry out its mission:

• Sufficient income from its member congregations to support essential programs, leadership, people, and facilities
• Sufficient percentage of the budget left over for programs/ministries intended to achieve the judicatory’s mission after general operating expenses are paid (salaries, office supplies, bills, etc.)
• Low level of dependence on endowments.
• Sufficient human resources (staff and judicatory volunteers) with sufficient energy to joyfully lead/participate in its ministries/programs.
• Significant positive impact on its congregations and the communities they serve.

For best results for your judicatory please follow these suggested best practices:

Designate an JVA Coordinator

It will be important to designate a single person as the JVA Coordinator.

This person will:

1. Identify a group of individuals to take the JVA, including equal numbers of 3 types of people:
   1. Key judicatory leaders.
   2. Key congregation leaders.
   3. Leaders of key judicatory bodies (e.g., committees, commissions, counsels, etc.).
2. Register the judicatory on the JVAtools.org site.
3. Start a New Survey – this can be done at any time from your Account
4. Receive the confirmation email which will include a shareable link to the survey.
5. Share the results with the sample group and the leadership.

Sample Size and Composition

For most judicatories the JVA survey sample group typically includes 9-15 people. Smaller judicatories may select a smaller sample. Larger judicatories may select a smaller sample. Choose the size that best suits the situation of your judicatory, keeping in mind that too small a sample may reduce representation and too large a sample may become unmanageable.

The composition of the JVA survey sample should include roughly equal numbers of 3 types of people:

1. Key judicatory leaders. Top executive (e.g., bishop, superintendent, etc.) or designee, plus 2-4 other senior judicatory level leaders.
2. Key congregation leaders. A group of 3-5 congregational leaders, representative of the diversity of the congregations that make up the judicatory (e.g., region, size, race/ethnicity, ordination status, or other factors that make sense in your judicatory).
3. Leaders of key judicatory bodies. A group of 3-5 people group representative of important judicatory committees, commissions, counsels, etc.).

Again, adapt sample size as needed, keeping roughly equal numbers of the three types of people above.

Invite, Don’t Advertise

Once you have determined what a representative group should look like, select individuals that represent the various groups you have identified, and personally/individually invite them. Explain how the results can benefit the judicatory and its congregations. Explain to each person why their input is important.

Decide on a Date to Start the Survey

After you have registered your judicatory, you will receive an email notification that your judicatory has been registered and you are ready to start and provides you a JVA survey link to send you your Survey Sample Group (the group you want to take the survey)..

21-Day Timeframe. From the time the first person takes the survey, your group will have 21 days to complete their individual survies before the survey is closed and your results are available.

Registrant First. We recommend that the person who registered the congregation for the JVA be the first person to complete the survey.

Start on a Monday. For a number of reasons, we recommend the JVA be started on a Monday. We have found that starting on a weekend slows completion and reduces the number of survey respondents completing the survey.

Send an Email with the JVA Survey Link to your Survey Sample Group. We recommend sending an individual email to each member of your Survey Group describing:

• Why your judicatory is taking the JVA and why it’s important they complete it.
• How long the have to complete it (21 days) and how long it generally takes to answer all the questions (45 min if you don’t overthink the questions).
• What judicatory leadership plans to do with the results.
• Also, assure them that the results are anonymized.

Remind, Remind, Remind

Inform the participants that they will have until 21 days after the JVA was initiated (provide the exact date) to complete the assessment, and that after the last day you will receive the results.

Remind the those who will be taking the JVA at several points during the 21-day assessment period:

• 7 days before the deadline.
• 4 days before the deadline.
• 1 day before the deadline.
• On the day of the deadline.

Share the Results

Share the JVA results with throughout the judicatory in concentric circles starting with the sample group and working outward:

• Top judicatory leaders and staff.
• Judicatory governing and ministry bodies. Leaders and members of committees, commission, councils, etc.).
• Congregation leaders. Top clergy and lay leaders of all of the congregations of the diocese (in larger judicatories the could be broken out by region).

Pro-Tip:

Put the results in a spreadsheet and create a barchart, then:

• Highlight the top 3 vitality areas of strength. The judicatory can leverage these strengths to engage missional opportunities.
• Highlight the 3 areas most in need of improvement. The judicatory may choose to supplement these areas by collaborating with other judicatories (continuous same-denomination judicatories or other-denomination judicatories sharing the same geographic area).
• Draw an arrow from the Internal Sustainability score to the External Sustainability score. This can give judicatory leadership an indication of the direction in which the judicatory may be headed sustainability-wise.

Discern how God is speaking to you through the data

Yes, data can play an important role in judicatory discernment, by helping you look into your blind spots and overcome your unconscious biases.

Pro-Tip:

For best discernment results, utilize MapDash for Faith Communities (available through FaithX), to explore key demographics, trends, and analytics (i.e., graphical geographic algorithmic analysis) both across the judicatory and by its regions, in order to identify missional opportunities and challenges. Available analytics include:

1. Missional Opportunity Index. Represents geographic areas according to their levels of missional opportunity and challenge.
2. Congregational Vitality Index. Provides estimates of trends in congregational vitality based on parochial reporting data.
3. Congregational Sustainability Index. Provides estimates of trends in congregational sustainability based on external demographic trends in the areas they serve.
4. Congregational Margin of Improvement Index. Provides estimates of the likelihood of improvement or decline of congregations.
5. Religiously Unaffiliated Index. Provides estimates of the percentage of the population not affiliated with a congregation.
6. Housing Instability Index (predictive of homelessness). Provides estimates of the likelihood of homelessness

Need help in interpreting and reflecting on any of the above?

Contact FaithX at info@faithx.net.

Click here to review a JVA sample of questions.

The JVA is the first and only of its kind.

There is no other available research-based diagnostic tool for assessing judicatory vitality and sustainability.

The JVA asks the user to answer 5-10 questions in each of 17 areas of judicatory functioning:

• 16 focused on judicatory vitality
• 1 focused on judicatory sustainability

Click here for a sample question set.

The Judicatory will have 14-days to administer the JVA.

After 14 days, answers are scored and the person who initiate the JVA then receives summary scores of each of the 16 vitality areas and 1 score for sustainability, along with positive suggestions of ways to improve in each area.

• Click here for a sample report

Also available are infographic analytic reports, which analyse judicatory vitality and sustainability scores in context, and which are available directly for a small additional fee or available at no extra charge as part of an interpretive consultation with FaithX.

• Click here for a sample analytics report

Click on this email address to request interpretive consultation from FaithX: info@faithx.net.

JVA diagnostic ratings are based on a criterion-referenced 1-4 scale
(not on a curve):

• 3-4: High
• 2-3: Moderate
• 1-2: Low

Click here to review the research sources.

All JVA questions are grounded in research, and research suggests that using an endowment to underwrite operating expenses (including ongoing outreach) negatively affects individual and judicatory stewardship over the long term. Endowments aren’t forever. That means that judicatories that grow dependent on them are much more likely to drive off the proverbial cliff when the money runs out.

There are several things a Judicatory can do after taking the JVA. These include:

1. Review JVA results and recommendations with judicatory leadership and representative group that completed it. Identify your judicatory’s 2-3 areas of greatest vitality strength and 2-3 areas of greatest vitality weakness.
2. Conduct a demographic assessment of the missional opportunities and challenges in the area your Judicatory serves. Identify the 2-3 greatest missional opportunities and the 2-3 greatest missional challenges.
3. Find consensus around greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. Select 1-2 of each.
4. Identify areas of judicatory vitality strength that you can leverage to effectively engage missional opportunities and challenges in the area it serves, and to effectively address areas of judicatory vitality weakness.
5. Identify strategies to engage identified opportunities and challenges, and address identified areas of vitality.
6. Determine which strategies you feel capable pursuing yourselves and which you might need help with.
7. Implement strategies. Start small, experiment, build on successes.

The above process is what we call a Missional Assessment. You can do it yourselves or you can engage FaithX to lead you through it (we meet with your judicatory leaders in four sessions over a 6-8 week period to guide you through the process).

Contact us at info@faithx.net for more information or to schedule a free 30-min discussion to weigh your alternatives.

• Step 1 – Research: The JVA was based on an extensive study of research on judicatory vitality and sustainability from a variety of sources (click here) and will be refined as new research emerges.
• Step 2 – Iterative Prototyping: Using data and feedback gathered from interested judicatories.
• Step 3 – Soft Launch & Beta-Testing: JVA 1.1. Gathering data and feedback from early adopting judicatories. hundreds of congregations across a similar cross section. (1st & 2nd Qtr- 2024)
• Step 4 – Launch: JVA 2.0 (3rd Qtr 2024)
• Step 5 – Ongoing Updates and Enhancements: based on user feedback and emerging research.

Absolutely. People of color were involved throughout the design, prototyping, and beta testing of the JVA. In addition, the FaithX Board of Directors, of which nearly half are people of color, continue to provide feedback for ongoing improvements in the JVA.

We hope to include a Spanish version of the JVA in 2026.

Fee: The $2,495 cost for JVA includes setup and user orientation, one survey, and 1 year of access to analytics and results. This can be renewed at any time to start a new survey and receive another year’s worth of access.

Included in Cost:

• Set-up: Customized for each judicatory.
• Orientation: Initial training and one-month follow-up. Helping judicatory leadership think through how to integrate the JVA with their other evaluative processes.
• Use for one year.
• Continued research on congregational vitality and sustainability.
• Continued refinement of the tool, including translating the questions and prescriptive recommendations into different languages and tailoring them to the ecclesiology terminology of different denominations.
• Annual updates and upgrades based on the above.

Discounts include:

• Judicatory Partnership Program: Judicatories that would like both the CVA JP and the JVA will receive a discount on the JVA. Contact info@faithx.com to receive the discount code.

30-40 minutes max. If you take longer than that, you are thinking too long and hard about the answers. Do not overthink – respond quickly and move on.

If you don’t know or are not confident about a certain answer, select the answer that represents your best intuition. It is valuable to know what respondents’ perceptions are. In the end we are measuring many things, including perceptions from several viewpoints.